


stay?

by alpacasandravens



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Asexual Character, Gay Dreams TM, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Platonic Cuddling, asexual jonathan, pre-relationship for hattercrow, there are definitely Feelings though, they're FRIENDS dammit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-21
Updated: 2019-08-21
Packaged: 2020-09-23 09:49:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20338153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alpacasandravens/pseuds/alpacasandravens
Summary: a combination of two prompts: Jonathan and Jerome platonic cuddling after Jonathan has a nightmare AND Jonathan has a Gay Dream about Jervis.





	stay?

**Author's Note:**

> working title for this fic was "im sex-repulsed and sometimes god sends me Dreams TM and they feel like god got the wrong address when he mailed them"  
warning for internalized acephobia

Jonathan rolled over and tried to go back to sleep. As soon as he closed his eyes, he saw it again. Even with his eyes open, he felt like it was playing on a film reel in the back of his mind - he saw himself confidently taking Jervis’s hand, because it was a dream, and he couldn’t be afraid there. And he would be fine with that, if that’s all that would play. But he knew it wasn’t. 

He stared at the impenetrable darkness of his room and stubbornly refused to close his eyes, as though that would prevent him from seeing it. His eyes focused on the shadowy outline of the doorframe and pretended he was examining that instead of the crystal-clear footage in his head. Jervis, leaning forward to kiss him. Him, kissing back. His face grew hot as he remembered the dream, how they’d unlaced their fingers to desperately clutch at the other as the kiss deepened. When his brain did not turn itself off and the lens of his still vividly-remembered dream moved back, so that he could see what his body was doing and was unable to do anything except feel a sharp stab of disgust about it, he angrily pulled on his mask and stomped out of the room.

The stark green of the microwave clock shone out of the darkness in the rest of the house. _3:35 am_. Too early to reasonably have woken up, but Jonathan knew he wasn’t going back to sleep. He couldn’t, not after that. Even while he’d been asleep, it had felt distinctly wrong, and it had been that wrongness that had jolted him out of the dream. He shuddered. It was better to be awake, anyway.

Still, there wasn’t much he could do at this time of night. He would love to work, to throw himself into formulas and things that made sense, but all of his notebooks and equipment were safely stored in the Wayne Enterprises laboratory he’d taken over with Freeze’s help. The laboratory that was almost halfway across Gotham. Jonathan couldn’t drive - he’d never learned how, he’d been too young - and he certainly couldn’t take public transit without getting arrested. So for now, he was stuck here.

He grabbed a pop-tart out of the box on the counter and stuck it in the microwave. It would probably be better toasted, but really, that meant finding out if this house Penguin had provided the Legion with even had a toaster, and that was far too much effort. After a few seconds, he took the pop-tart out. He’d left it in too long, and the middle was almost too hot to touch. Damn.

Jonathan retreated to the couch with his slightly-burnt pop-tart and curled up in the corner against the armrest. Reaching over onto the side table, he turned on a lamp. Really, Oswald was so pretentious - instead of just having a light like a normal person, he had filled the rooms with lamps, which did nothing except appear needlessly fancy when he was hosting wanted criminals used to Arkham’s painfully bright LED lights.

The soft yellow glow of the lamp didn’t quite light up the whole room, but Jonathan didn’t want it to. It left the corners dark and cast long shadows behind the furniture, and even in the illuminated area there was the distinct impression that it could have been brighter. This lamp left no doubt that it was the middle of the night.

Jonathan was grateful. He’d gotten, in his opinion, far too upset about that dream, and all he wanted to do was hide. Light meant daytime and daytime meant people, so he wanted just enough of it to stave off sleep.

As he ate his pop-tart, mask pushed up over his nose and making a face at the burnt part in the center where the filling was distinctly off, he let himself spiral down a rabbit hole (and he wished his brain wouldn’t use that phrase right now) of anger and disgust, all directed at himself. It was just a dream, so it shouldn’t matter, he told himself. But of course it did matter, because he wasn’t sleeping and was instead hiding from his own brain on a couch, and this upset him. The fact that this upset him made him angry at himself, and so on the cycle went. 

Offhand, he thought that if Jervis were here, he’d probably offer to make tea and say some stupid rhyme that would make Jonathan laugh, and for a brief second Jonathan wished he was here. As soon as that thought flashed across his mind, he remembered that Jervis was the reason he was upset, and he was glad he was alone. 

Jerome found Jonathan some time later, still curled up on the corner of the couch, holding what Jonathan knew was a truly dreadful cup of tea. He didn’t know how it was possible to mess up putting a tea bag in water, but somehow he had. Maybe he just didn’t like tea.

“You’re up late,” Jerome observed. “Or maybe early? Whatcha up to?”

Jonathan just shrugged somewhat helplessly and motioned with his mug.

“Is that tea?” Jerome asked suspiciously.

“Yeah.” Jonathan knew his voice sounded hollowed-out, and once again he felt a wave of self-hatred that he’d gotten this noticeably upset over something so stupid.

To his credit, Jerome didn’t make a joke. He perched on the edge of the armrest Jonathan was leaning against and asked “Are you ok?”

Jonathan didn’t know what to say. He definitely wasn’t okay, but he had to be. He needed to be able to swallow his anger and be okay, because he _was_ fear. He shouldn’t feel anything else. He didn’t want to. So he shrugged again, because he didn’t know what else he could do.

“D’you wanna talk?”

“No.”

“Okay. Scoot.” Jonathan didn’t move, and Jerome raised his eyebrows. “_Scoot_.”

So Jonathan moved over, and Jerome slid off the armrest into the spot between it and Jonathan. 

“There’s a whole couch, you know.”

Jerome sighed. “C’mere.”

“What.”

Jerome looked him in the eyes through the scarecrow mask. This was probably the most serious Jonathan had ever seen him. “If you don’t wanna talk, I’m gonna sit with ya. So c’mere.”  
Jonathan raised an eyebrow.

“Look, I used to… I did this for Miah. He’d get upset if he wasn’t perfect, and I’d calm him down. I know what I’m doing.”

Jonathan had only heard of Jerome’s brother a few times. He knew, vaguely, that Miah was the real reason behind the Legion, that all Jerome’s talk about painting the town crazy was just that. Talk. 

He couldn’t imagine Jerome as a brother. Jerome was a force of nature, destruction given a body. So seeing him completely serious, offering to comfort Jonathan when he didn’t even know what was wrong… it was jarring.

Still, Jonathan moved closer to Jerome and leaned against his side, and Jerome put an arm around him until he was halfway hugging him. It was nice, Jonathan thought. Surprisingly so. 

Sometimes, he wondered whether Jerome cared about anything at all. Miah seemed to have been the only person Jerome had loved, and while he didn’t know the whole story on that, it was pretty obvious to Jonathan that something awful had happened between them. He hadn’t been able to figure out whether Jerome cared about him and Jervis, or whether they were simply brought along for their talent and flair, like Firefly and Freeze. This right here meant that Jerome definitely cared about him, and Jonathan wasn’t sure what to do with that fact.

So he sat there, staring into the cup of tea he wasn’t even enjoying drinking, and let Jerome hold him.

Being held by someone was a weird feeling. He didn’t dislike it - it was definitely helping; he could practically feel the anger draining away. It was simply so alien that he didn’t know how to process it. He had such minimal physical contact with other people that he was almost lost. For six years, he’d been trapped in Arkham, and no one had touched him. Not a hug, not even an accidental brushing of hands. Jervis hugged him, of course. Because Jervis’s conception of personal space was very different than most people’s. (Or, as Jonathan was beginning to think after having met Jerome, he personally put more value on personal space than most people.) But before that?

Even when he’d lived with his father, he hadn’t cared enough to give him a hug when he was feeling down. He’d been too focused on curing Jonathan, fixing a son that hadn’t been broken. So he relished the contact now, leaning in to Jerome’s side. Jerome seemed to sense that, and gently pulled him closer.

He didn’t know how long they’d been sitting there when he said “I had a bad dream.” It sounded too loud in the early morning silence.

He winced, waiting for Jerome to judge him. He was the Scarecrow! He was better than this! How lame Jerome must think he was, pretending to be fearless and powerful when he could so easily be reduced to this.

“What happened?” Jerome’s voice was quiet and far gentler than Jonathan had expected. 

_Right,_ Jonathan reminded himself. _Because he cares about me, not just how I can help him._

He opened his mouth to speak and found that he just couldn’t do it. He wanted to speak, he really did, but the words just weren’t working.

“It’s ok to be scared, ya know. I have the most fun when I’m scared shitless, but that might just be me.”

“Wasn’t scared.”

Jerome reached up and tugged gently on the scarecrow mask, just enough that it slipped slightly down Jonathan’s face. “Sure.” His voice was fond, but he clearly didn’t believe Jonathan.

“I wasn’t,” Jonathan said, reaching up with both hands to readjust the mask. “It was about -” He took a deep breath. He was going to say this. “It was about me and Jervis. Together.”

“Hold on a second. You _like_ our Hatter?” Jonathan could see the effort it was taking for Jerome to not make a joke about that. To not laugh. But he restrained himself, and Jonathan appreciated that, even if he felt distinctly judged.

He sighed. “I don’t know.”

“But you had a dream about him.”

Jonathan nodded.

“And it upset you this much?”

He nodded again and furiously twisted the fabric of his sleeves between his fingers.

“Do I need to kill him?” Jerome asked, and Jonathan knew he was half serious.

“No! It wasn’t -” Jonathan wanted to say ‘it wasn’t anything bad.’ He was pretty sure Jerome thought Jervis had done something terrible in the dream, and he hadn’t. But in Jonathan’s opinion, the dream itself did count as something bad. “We were, um. _Together_.”

Jerome did let out a small laugh at this. “You’ve been about to cry - don’t tell me you’re not, I have eyes - for the last hour because you had a sex dream. About Jervis.”

Jonathan laughed, or maybe it was a sigh - it sounded slightly hysterical. “It wasn’t even sex, it was just kissing.”

“Are you upset you have a crush on him?” Jerome frowned.

He shrugged helplessly. “Kind of, but that’s not the problem.” He tried to find some sort of courage, or even some shred of Scarecrow to make himself unafraid of speaking, but he came up empty. Instead, he spoke fast, as though if he rushed through everything he was saying Jerome wouldn’t hear any of it. 

“Sex - or the idea of me having sex - isn’t appealing at all and it kind of makes me wish I didn’t have a body, and it’s the same with kissing, like real kissing, so even though the version of me in the dream was enjoying it, it felt like I was watching myself from the outside, and I hated it. I was just watching and I couldn’t make the me in the dream stop and I felt like I didn’t have control over my body, and I know that came out of my mind and that just makes it worse.”

Jerome turned to face Jonathan and brought his other arm up to complete the hug. Hesitantly, Jonathan hugged him back, cautiously hooking his chin over Jerome’s shoulder and holding him tighter. 

“I can’t imagine not enjoying a sex dream, but for what it’s worth, I’m sorry,” Jerome said. 

“Thanks.” Jonathan mumbled, not letting Jerome go. 

“Does that mean you like Jervis for his personality?”

Jonathan wished he wasn’t holding Jerome so close so that he could punch him, or at the very least throw something at him. “Fuck off.”

“It’s a legit question!” Jonathan couldn’t see Jerome’s face but he could tell he was smiling, and he’d bet he had that evil look in his eye too.

“I guess it does.”

“Crazy,” Jerome laughed.

“You did say you wanted ‘the creme de la crazy,’ didn’t you?”

“That I did. But that’s - wow.”

Jonathan pulled back from Jerome and looked him in the eyes. “Will you stay with me, for a little?”

“Of course.” Jerome put his arm around Jonathan where he curled up against his side.

“Thank you,” Jonathan whispered. Jerome just pulled him a little closer in response.

**Author's Note:**

> if you enjoyed drop kudos/a comment below or come talk to me @alpacasandravens on tumblr!!


End file.
